Flavoring components are utilized in a wide variety of food and beverage products to impart, provide, modify, or improve the flavor or taste to the product. Such components are generally known to be very unstable. Thus, its desirable flavor characteristics can be lost or degraded easily during or after processing or storage over time.
As coffee aroma degrades, it generates unpleasant and non-coffee-like notes that are undesirable. This degradation substantially reduces the perceived quality of the product. For this reason, special attention must be paid to the preparation and storage of flavoring components such as coffee aroma so that either desirable aroma components are preserved or enhanced or undesirable components are reduced or eliminated.
The prior art recognizes that various flavor protective agents can be added to food or beverage products in order to preserve, maintain, or improve the flavor characteristics of such products. For example, it is well known in the art that sulfites can be added to beverages such as beer or wine to preserve the flavor of such beverages. Generally, sulfites act as antioxidants to prevent deterioration of the flavor. For example, sulfites can react with oxygen to prevent deterioration of the flavor of the product due to oxidation of the flavoring component. Also, Japanese patent application 08-196212 discloses the addition of sulfite, catalase, cysteine, or glutathione to a coffee beverage when water is added to reconstitute the beverage to give an improved coffee aroma characteristic.
Instead of adding the sulfites directly to food products, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,041,209 and 4,536,409 disclose that sulfites may be incorporated into the packaging to prevent absorption of oxygen into the packaged food. Again, oxidation of the flavor component in the whole food matrix is prevented so that the desired flavor of the food is retained for a longer period of time.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,540,889 discloses that methyl mercaptan can be added to an aqueous extract of soluble coffee solids prior to drying the extract to a stable moisture content for improving the flavor of this extract when it is later reconstituted as a coffee beverage. In most illustrations of the prior art, the compound that is added remains in the product to be consumed. For this reason, the use of sulfites or other additives that remain in the food or beverage after such treatments is not a desirable solution to this problem. Thus, there still remains a need for stabilization of volatile flavoring components of plant derived products, such as coffee, in order to preserve their ability to impart the desired flavor, taste and other sensory characteristics to foods to which they are added. The present invention now satisfies this need.